The White House is touting its $US1 trillion ($1.52 trillion) defence budget for 2026. Mr Trump has also taken a deserved bow for getting NATO to agree to spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence.
But the US isn’t meeting that NATO target. It’s spending roughly half the 6 per cent of GDP it devoted to defence at the height of Ronald Reagan’s military build-up. Even the $US1 trillion is a game of three-card monte. The administration counts in that total about $US113bn for defence in the GOP’s budget reconciliation bill. That money was supposed to turbocharge purchases of ships, aircraft and unmanned technology – above normal defence spending.
Yet when the budget bill is excluded, the administration has proposed a cut after inflation for 2026. Absent more annual GOP bills, which may not be possible if Republicans lose congress, defence spending could fall to about 2.65 per cent of the economy by 2029 at the end of Mr Trump’s term. That’ comparable to the European levels that Mr Trump thinks are so pathetic.
Take shipbuilding. The 2026 request asks for a mere three US Navy ships, though the fleet is 60 short of its goal to deter China. Funding for 16 more ships is included in the GOP budget bill. But no contractor puts up long-term capital to expand production for a one-year plan.
Unstable demand from government helped produce the current shipbuilding crisis. Mr Trump cares about restoring US naval power, but what matters is the scoreboard. America needs to build 2.33 attack submarines a year to meet our own requirements and a commitment to sell hulls to the Australians. The current rate is 1.1.
Where is the navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plan that would set a strategic direction for the fleet? “We’re still looking at that,” a navy official told reporters last month.
The White House argues that the bifurcated defence budget is merely a manoeuvre to push more defence money through congress without Democratic votes. But the President can ask congress for what he wants, and the budget request reflects his priorities.
The budget is inadequate even on Mr Trump’s ideas. A Golden Dome missile shield, a crucial project for better protecting the US homeland, receives a one-time $US25bn in the GOP budget bill. What’s the plan to fund this enormous undertaking, which includes space-based interceptors, for decades to come? Ask again later.
Why this mismatch between Mr Trump’s rhetoric and budget reality? The fiscal hawks at the Office of Management and Budget have made common cause with the isolationists at Defence and the White House. The former want the US military to do more with less, and the latter prefer to do less with less.
Buried in the budget proposal are bad trade-offs driven in part by the lack of money. The air force is dumping a command-and-control plane in favour of a space system that isn’t yet ready for prime time, a risk if war arrives before the new tech. The navy’s dysfunctional new frigate is in limbo, but the fleet will shrink without these small combatants coming online on time.
The budget pours $3.5bn into the new F-47 fighter jet, which is needed. Yet F-35 buys are cut to 47 from 74, and a new fighter for the US Navy is on hold. The latter is especially absurd: US aircraft carrier vulnerability in the Pacific is the most discussed military weakness of the decade, and longer-range aircraft on carriers would be a big counter.
Mr Trump likes to invoke Reagan’s peace-through-strength world view. But the Gipper made a sustained case about the threats the US faced and the forces required to keep the peace. He explicitly rejected making “defence once again the scapegoat of the federal budget”.
The threats to US security today are arguably greater than during the Cold War: a peer competitor in China, an imperial Russia, the risk of proliferating nuclear weapons, and new technology that empowers lesser powers and threatens the US homeland.
Congress can fill some of the Trump defence potholes, but reinvigorating the US military requires White House leadership. So far, Mr Trump isn’t providing it.
The Wall Street Journal
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